Sundance Film Fesival Day 2

Let’s see if I can even remember Saturday. Lack of sleep, living off theater food and late night pizza doesn’t make up for a healthy short term memory program. Someone bring me a green smoothie!

Somehow we accidentally wound up with a ticket to Maggie’s Plan in Salt Lake City on Saturday. It is our only non-Park City film. But it all worked out rather well.

We took an Uber down to the theater and enjoyed this random twist on divorce and affairs. The film stars Julianne Moore as an uptight yet enchanting French novelist married to Ethan Hawke, a high strung romantic and academic novelist obsessed with the crosses of anthropology and economy.

Since the movie was in Salt Lake, none of the actors came. I can’t even remember who it was that gave the Q&A. I want to say he was a producer.

After the movie, my dad picked us up from the Grand Theater and we went through our usual Saturday as if nothing in life has changed – eating a wintry-warm German lunch with friends and family at Siegfried’s before our regular Coffee & Crossword meet up at Coffee Garden (winter edition). My dad and Shaun both left after lunch. Jason, Jeff, Colin, and the two of us did the crossword.

Our movie let out too late for us to make any of the preferred events, so we just stayed in SLC through dinner with friends. We took Jeff and his husband to Naked Fish to celebrate his Donaghy moment of a second promotion at his still fairly new job. Shaun was able to come with us for that part. It was fun.

Afterward, we took an UberSki back to Park City. It has been snowing fairly steadily for about four hours at that point. We made it back into town ok and just in time to head to our 11:45 pm movie, Trash Fire at the Egyptian Theater.

Wtf?

Sundance is filled with artistic interpretations this year. I hate to say it but the most enticing part of the Trash Fire premiere was being witness to the very kind-hearted director publicly propose to his now fiancé. The movie itself, despite usual actors and the dreamy eyes of Adrian Griere, seemed to fall flat as an all-encompassing midnight horror film. I think the main female character completely missed the mark as acting like a burn victim. She had a high voice, which isn’t realistic. She had poor lines. And she repeatedly said in the movie how she had 80% of her body burned and deformed, but on screen her hands and arms were completely fine. Her hair was done. Her hands were model-like and thin. I just wasn’t feeling it. Everyone else was spot on and she kept ruining it.

The Q&A wasn’t entirely different. Everyone was spot on while the actress that played the main victim of the movie was as high as a freakin kite. Hollywood…

Afterward, we walked back to the Yarrow from Egyptian. It’s always blatantly obvious who came from Hollywood and who is a tried and true New Yorker. Hollywood types insist on taking private cars and taking 10 steps a day in ridiculous outfits that aren’t conducive to winter weather while New Yorkers blaze past you on the side walk as if you’ve been the only thing standing in their way their entire life. I appreciate that. Those are my people.